A NATION CHALLENGED: MAZAR-I-SHARIF

A NATION CHALLENGED: MAZAR-I-SHARIF; A Deadly Siege At Last Won Mazar-i-Sharif

By CARLOTTA GALL

Published: November 19, 2001

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Nov. 18—
At least 300 Taliban soldiers died in the fighting when troops of the Northern Alliance laid siege to a Taliban barracks as the alliance seized the city eight days ago, its commander here said today.

Most of those housed in the barracks in what had been the Sultan Razia girls' school were foreign fighters, the Northern Alliance said.

The alliance fought for nearly two weeks to take the city, advancing from three directions and using 600 fighters on horseback as well as standard fighting units, said Gen. Ostad Atta Muhammad, a Northern Alliance commander. As the alliance closed in on the city, most of the Taliban forces collapsed and withdrew rather than fight, he said. Only the foreign fighters remained and refused all offers to surrender.

''The most resistance was in the school,'' he said. About 300 Taliban were killed in the fighting because they resisted, he said. ''We had a rule that if they surrender, we will not fight. But they were so barbaric they resisted.'' General Atta Muhammad said he lost 30 of his own men in the fighting, one of whom had gone forward to try to mediate.

A United Nations spokeswoman in Islamabad, Pakistan, had first cited reports of the killings of Taliban fighters last week, raising fears that captured men had been slain. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had said that reports that prisoners were killed were ''unsubstantiated and sensational charges,'' but General Atta Muhammad's account could not be confirmed through other accounts today.

The general described a combined air and ground assault in which an American bomb might have killed a large number of the fighters, and the rest refused to be taken alive.

He said that American planes bombed the building once, destroying one side of it. United States troops and Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, another alliance commander, had pushed to end the resistance with bombing, General Atta Muhammad said, but he told them not to continue for fear of harming civilians. Instead, Northern Alliance troops battled the remaining men to the end.

The number of fighters who died at the barracks might have been higher than 300. A CNN reporter who has been in the city for some days has quoted Red Cross workers collecting the bodies as saying there were between 300 and 400 of them. Most of them were believed to have been Pakistanis and other non-Afghans.

More than 700 men are thought to have been in the school, and about 200 surrendered, leaving approximately 500 unaccounted for. Some others escaped and hid in nearby houses, and some were wounded and have been handed over to the Red Cross, the general said.

The foreign fighters had refused to surrender and were firing out of the school toward the streets and surrounding bazaar, causing civilian casualties, General Atta Muhammad said. ''One of our soldiers went to talk to them to persuade them to surrender and they shot him,'' he said.

There was little sign in the city today of the tumultuous events of the last week because the fighting had been localized around the school. Life here appeared normal, even bustling. People said they were glad to see the Taliban go and happy to have General Dostum, their old ruler, back in town. The Soviet-trained general ruled the province peacefully through much of the 1990's, until ousted by the Taliban in 1998.

Minibuses and yellow taxis wove in and out to avoid cyclists and horse carts on the crowded, dusty streets. Few weapons were visible besides those carried by guards and fighters clustered round the gates of a few houses.

General Atta Muhammad, 37, a tall, black-bearded man who led the military offensive, was receiving people and going through papers in his headquarters not far from the blue-and-turquoise-tiled shrine of Hazrat Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. About two dozen fighters thronged the rose garden in front of the mosque on the second day of Ramadan, praying on the lawn as the sun set before they could break their daylong fast.

Together with General Dostum and Ustad Mohaqiq, the leader of the Shiite fighters in the region, General Atta Muhammad has formed a general council to rule for an interim period and ensure security. The three men represent the three main ethnic groups in the region -- Uzbeks, Hazaras and Tajiks respectively. The three planned to meet again on Monday, and it is expected that General Dostum will be made leader of the council and General Atta Muhammad his deputy.

The council is part of a long-agreed-upon plan, drawn up by the former leader of the Northern Alliance fighting force, Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated on Sept. 9, to lead Afghanistan toward a democratic, elected system.

''We want a multiethnic, broad-based government for the country and we want Mazar to be the center of the north, a civilian-run place for organizations and foreigners to come to,'' said General Atta Muhammad, who is a native of the city. ''We want to build it up and make it strong.'' He contended that Afghanistan did not need foreign troops or peacekeepers, but aid and help with reconstruction.

He also said that the former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, should not extend his stay in Kabul, the capital, and delegations representing people from throughout the country should go to Kabul to decide on the future government.

''The door should be open for people's delegations to choose their future,'' he said. General Atta Muhammad ruled out any negotiations with Taliban leaders for a role in a future government but said that the Pashtun, who constitute a large proportion of the Afghan population, should be included and even lead the government.

He said his fighters were being moved out to barracks on the edges of the city. His men could be seen patching up former Soviet-built barracks on the road in from the airport, flying black banners on the buildings in mourning for General Massoud. Troops have occupied both civilian and military airports, and General Dostum has occupied the old fort in the town, which American troops also appear to be using.